The Alaska Democratic Party has announced three finalists to fill the vacant seat in the Alaska House of Representatives left by the resignation of Rep. Dean Westlake, R-Kiana.<\/p>\n
The three finalists are Leanna Mack of Utqiagvik, Sandy Shroyer-Beaver of Kotzebue and Eugene Smith of Kotzebue.<\/p>\n
The finalists were selected from among eight applicants by a nine-member committee of House District 40 Democrats after an interview process. Their names were announced Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Under state law, Gov. Bill Walker has until Jan. 24 — 30 days after Westlake’s resignation — to appoint one of the three to the vacant seat. That person must then be approved by a majority of the 16 Democrats who sit in the chamber.<\/p>\n
Westlake, elected in 2016, resigned from the Alaska Legislature<\/a> after several women said they had been sexually harassed by him in Juneau. KTUU-TV reported other cases of sexual harassment before his arrival in Juneau, and that Westlake fathered a child with a teen girl in the 1980s<\/a>. Two women and one man are the finalists to replace him.<\/p>\n • Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com or call 523-2258.<\/b><\/p>\n The Alaska Democratic Party has announced three finalists to fill the vacant seat in the Alaska House of Representatives left by the resignation of Rep. Dean Westlake, R-Kiana. The three finalists are Leanna Mack of Utqiagvik, Sandy Shroyer-Beaver of Kotzebue and Eugene Smith of Kotzebue. The finalists were selected from among eight applicants by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alaska-legislature","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34436"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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